How old is the room where Simsbury's witch story will be told this month? The tale goes back to the town's first meetinghouse, built in 1683 near what is now the center gate of Simsbury Cemetery. The Meeting House on the Simsbury Historical Society campus at 800 Hopmeadow Street is a reproduction built in 1970. When Betsy Maguire's Murder at 3 Corner Pond: A Colonial Tale opens there on October 22, the audience will sit in a room 287 years younger than the one the story describes.
That gap is a theme of this October's calendar. Most of the Society's programming for the month takes place in rooms that are new, rebuilt, or were sold off from an older estate. The rooms are newer than the history, and the history still comes through.
A Legend, a Replica, and a Return After Fourteen Years
The Historical Society says the play is based on a local legend, "The Witch of Simsbury," and that its Meeting House "figures prominently in the story." Maguire's 14-character play was first staged in 2011 and again in 2012. This month's run is its first return since then. A 2012 Patch community post about the earlier run names the alleged witch as Debby Griffen and says the tale was set in Simsbury's original Meetinghouse. The Society calls it a legend, and the 2012 post describes Griffen only as an alleged witch. The Society's own word for the evening is "spooky fun."
The setting is the point of the play. In a 2022 Hartford Courant interview, Maguire said she had lived in Simsbury for 30 years, writes historical pieces, and created the living-history tours at the Mark Twain House. She started Playland Productions as a small theater company to stage work in nontraditional spaces instead of on conventional stages. A replica meetinghouse is about as close as a modern audience can get to the room the legend describes. The building was put up in 1970 to stand in for a lost one, and the play uses it that way.
The run details, as listed by the ticketing page:
| Performance | Time | Status as of Oct. 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, Oct. 22 | 7 p.m. | Sold out |
| Friday, Oct. 23 | 7 p.m. | Tickets available |
| Saturday, Oct. 24 | 2 p.m. | Tickets available |
| Sunday, Oct. 25 | 2 p.m. | Tickets available |
General admission is $22.50, including an estimated $2.50 fee. The show runs about 60 minutes. Opening night had already sold out when Patch posted the October lineup on October 2, so the weekend shows are the realistic options now.
A note on the title: a current map shows a waterbody called Three Corner Pond, also listed as "Three Cornered Pond," near Chatsworth Village. Nothing in the Society's description or the 2012 coverage says that is the pond in the story. Treat the connection as an open question, not a field trip.
The Campus Runs on the Same Principle
Walk the rest of the Society's grounds and the same pattern shows up. The Buildings page lists the Ellsworth Visitor Center, Phelps Tavern, Phelps Barn, Carriage House, School House, Hendrick Cottage, Probate Building, Ice House, Meeting House and Ensign-Bickford Exhibition Building, among others. Put the dates in order and the campus reads less like one preserved moment and more like a set assembled over two and a half centuries:
- ca. 1771. The Capt. Elisha Phelps House is built. It runs as a tavern from 1786 to 1849.
- 1962. The Phelps house and tavern is donated to the Historical Society.
- 1970. The reproduction Meeting House goes up to stand in for the 1683 original.
- 2024. The Griswold-Ensign Blacksmith Shop is built and becomes the site of hands-on forge classes.
The forge is the clearest case. A blacksmith shop only two years old is now one of the busiest teaching rooms on a campus devoted to the 18th and 19th centuries. Classes run under blacksmith Paul Spirito. The next one is Saturday, October 17, from 9 a.m. to noon, followed by sessions on November 7, November 21 and December 19. Each class costs $95 per person, is limited to adults 18 and older, and requires pre-registration, with 24 hours' notice needed for a full refund. The October 3 session has already happened. Patch reported on October 2 that only a limited number of beginner openings remained.
Phelps Tavern is the one structure on this list that is as old as it looks, and it is the anchor for weekend tours. Guided building tours run Saturdays at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. from April through November, weather permitting, and the Society asks visitors to call ahead. Admission, revised in February 2026, is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students, and $5 for children 6 and older. Members and children under 6 get in free. Free parking is at the Ellsworth Visitor Center, 10 Phelps Lane. The visitor center and museum store are open Thursday through Saturday, noon to 4 p.m., year-round. With tours ending in November, a Saturday visit this month or next is the last chance until spring.
A Church Campus That Started as School Land
The month's other history program leaves Hopmeadow Street for Bushy Hill Road, and it follows the same logic of a newer institution living on older ground. The Ethel Walker School was founded in 1911 in Lakewood, New Jersey, and moved in 1917 to the former Phelps-Dodge estate in Simsbury. St. Alban's Church bought its property from the school in the late 1950s, according to the parish's own newsletter. The church describes its campus today as 12 acres next to Ethel Walker's conservation area, at 197 Bushy Hill Road.
Ethel Walker School archivist Kim Harris-Thacker will lead walks on the history of the property and its tie to the school:
- Thursday, Oct. 8: 10:30 a.m. to noon
- Friday, Oct. 9: 6 to 7 p.m.
- Where to meet: park and gather in the St. Alban's parking lot
- Weather: rain or shine
The school's history page notes that Walker's Chapel was funded in 1956, close to when the parish bought its land. The available sources do not say whether that chapel is a building St. Alban's uses today. That is a fair question to bring to an archivist who knows both sides of the property line.
Planning the Month Around the Buildings
Put in order, the Society's October gives the full arc from oldest room to newest:
- Oct. 8 and 9: St. Alban's property walks, Bushy Hill Road
- Oct. 17: Blacksmithing class in the 2024 Griswold-Ensign shop, 9 a.m. to noon
- Oct. 23 to 25: Murder at 3 Corner Pond in the 1970 Meeting House
- Every Saturday through November: Phelps Tavern tours at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Families with younger children can pair the play weekend with Spooktacular 2026 at Simsbury Meadows, 22 Iron Horse Boulevard, on Saturday, October 24, from 1 to 5 p.m. The Simsbury Chamber lists live music, food vendors and trucks, trick-or-treating, bounce houses, games and costume contests. Tickets are $10 for ages 4 to 99, and children 3 and under get in free. Spooktacular wraps up at 5 p.m., and the Saturday performance of the play starts at 2 p.m., so anyone wanting both has to pick one in the afternoon. The Friday 7 p.m. show or the Sunday 2 p.m. show keeps Saturday open for the Meadows.
The Society says its programs are supported by memberships, donations, grants and sponsorships. Members get free tour admission, which makes membership worth a look for any household planning a Saturday at Phelps Tavern along with a night at the play.
Many Simsbury homes have a story much like the Meeting House: an older history carried by rooms that were added, rebuilt or restored along the way. If you own one and want to know how that history will read to a buyer, Lisa Sweeney Team can walk through it with you. Request a confidential consultation.
